Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Daniel 1 | Date: October 7, 2018 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Open your Bibles with me, if you will, to Daniel chapter 1. We have been trying to track out the Bible’s story of salvation. Within that, in our recent studies, we’ve been looking at the theme of the Messiah, and I have been saying that I wanted to look at Daniel chapter 7. And then I’ve decided, well, Daniel deals with so much of this, I should deal not only with Daniel 7, but maybe I should look at Daniel chapter 2, and then I should also look at Daniel chapter 4. And then I thought, well, let’s back up to Daniel chapter 1 and see what happens. So the next few weeks, anyway, we’re going to be looking at the prophecy of Daniel.

This morning, the title of the message is “By the Rivers of Babylon,” or simply “An Introduction to Daniel.” Daniel chapter 1:

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar—it’s another name for Babylon—to the house of his god and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god. Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace and to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.

The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years. And at the end of that time, they were to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names. Daniel, he called Belteshazzar. Hananiah, he called Shadrach. Mishael, he called Meshach. And Azariah, he called Abednego.

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore, he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear, my lord, the king who assigned your food and your drink, for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who were of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.”

Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Test your servants for 10 days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you and deal with your servants according to what you see.” So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. So the steward took away their food and the wine that they were to drink and gave them only vegetables.

As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom. And Daniel had an understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar, and the king spoke with them. And among all of them, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore, they stood before the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, it is a privilege, it is an honor to be able to open this book, to hear from you, and in this case, to be able to see how in time past, you were giving your plan for the future, how we have seen so much of that unfold already in history, how we look forward to see it culminate yet in the future. We are challenged by it to see not only your greatness and your sovereign rule over history, we are challenged by those whom we find faithful in this story. And in all of this, we pray that you would give us understanding of it, challenge our hearts, give us the faithfulness of Daniel, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Historical Background

When we come to the prophecy of Daniel, we enter a world that is very unlike most of the rest of the Bible. It is the 6th century BC, a time following the Davidic monarchy. We are not in Jerusalem or any part of Israel. We’re in Babylon. Although the focus at times is on Daniel, of course, and his three friends, the setting is thoroughly pagan. A good bit of the book is narrative like we have in the rest of the Bible, but also a good bit of the book is filled with prophecies and visions, and not just prophecies and visions, but visions that are strange. We have this great metallic image in chapter 2. We have these incredible beasts rising up out of the sea in chapter 7. We’ve got this big strange kind of male goat in chapter 8 and so on. And we’ve got these strange images, apocalyptic kind of literature that we’ll see in the weeks to come. But all of that, it just seems very strange to us.

And about half of this book of Daniel was written in Aramaic, not in Hebrew like the rest of the Old Testament, not in Greek like the New Testament, but it’s written in Aramaic, which is strange then as well. I remember when I was first learning Hebrew, and I thought I was coming along fairly well—Dr. Johnston will appreciate this—thought I was coming along pretty well, and I forget why I was looking up something in Daniel, and I turned to it. Aramaic is a cousin kind of language to Hebrew, and I turned to Daniel, and oh my, this vocabulary looks strange, verb forms look strange, I’m trying to figure it out; eventually it dawned on me this wasn’t Hebrew, this was Aramaic, and I was really glad nobody else was looking. I didn’t know how bad I was. But it’s a strange book on many levels.

But for all of its strangeness, it’s anything but boring. It’s exciting, it’s captivating, both in terms of the experiences of Daniel and his three friends, also in terms of the visions and the prophecies and all that will unfold that God tells us. At least, if you find it boring, don’t blame Daniel, and certainly don’t blame the Holy Spirit who inspired it. You’ll have to just blame the preacher. It’s just a fascinating prophecy, it seems to me.

Daniel gives us the setting of it in verses one to seven here of chapter one. In verses one to six, he recounts briefly for us the thorough plundering of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 BC. I would like—I don’t have the time, but I would like to have turned, for those of you taking notes, if you’d like, write down 2 Kings chapter 23, verse 36, all the way through chapters 24 and 25. That’s the end of 2 Kings 23 through 25, and it describes this event when Nebuchadnezzar comes to Jerusalem and sacks it. Actually, it’s a series of plunders and a series of deportations that culminate in 586 BC.

King Jehoiakim was king when Nebuchadnezzar came down. Jehoiakim was king in Judah. Nebuchadnezzar sacked Babylon. Jehoiakim was made sort of a puppet king, subject to the king of Babylon in Judea. He eventually rebelled against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar came back and crushed him again and killed him. And he put Jehoiachin, his son, in charge in Jerusalem. He is the next king, also known as Jeconiah. He was allowed to succeed his father, but he eventually rebelled. He then was in turn defeated and carried off into Babylon with his family and with other nobility. And then his uncle, Mattaniah, also known as Zedekiah, was placed in charge in Judah as king. He eventually rebelled. He was puppet king and he didn’t like living under Nebuchadnezzar’s rule either. He rebelled. Nebuchadnezzar comes back down, sacks him again, defeats Zedekiah, gouges out his eyes, kills his family, takes him off to Babylon as well.

You can read of all of this in Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, 2nd Kings, 2nd Chronicles. Ezra talks about it as well. But again, Nebuchadnezzar comes in a series of waves and defeats the city, slaughters the royal family, carries some to Babylon with him. And the armies not only ransacked the palace and the temple, but they took whatever of value there was in the temple—of the holy vessels—and what was of value in the palace, took it off to his own temple, his own palace in Babylon. Anything else of value in Jerusalem he destroyed, cut up into pieces. All of the houses of the nobility, all of the upper—what we would call upper middle class houses—anything of value was destroyed in the city, just laid to waste. The people of the city of Jerusalem and of Judea themselves were carried off into captivity and into Babylon. And the only people left were the poor people. And Judah now, so far from being an independent nation ruling itself, is carried off and this is what we call the Babylonian exile. And they’re off into Babylon there.

And at that point that we find Daniel now in Babylon. He is one of the nobility in Judea that was taken to Babylon and now groomed to serve the king in Babylon. All of this, by the way, was prophesied by the prophet Isaiah to King Hezekiah. You can read of it in 2 Kings chapter 20 in verse 18. You can also read it in Isaiah 39 verses 6 and 7: “Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up to this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons who will come from you whom you father shall be taken away and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” And all of this setting is what Daniel capsulizes for us in the first six or seven verses here of chapter one.

Before we work our way through the rest of the book, I’d like to spend some time this morning giving some historical background. I can’t imagine that anyone can remember all of these details. I can’t keep them all straight always either. But it’ll be helpful, I think, to see the larger political background of the Book of Daniel, because it does come into play in some of the prophecies that come later.

This is now then the Babylonian Empire, which is one of the great world powers of the 6th century BC. This is known as the Age of Four Kingdoms. There’s the Kingdom of Egypt, which was 26th Dynasty Egypt. There’s the Kingdom of Babylon, which is the Neo-Babylonian Empire. There’s also the Kingdom of the Medes, the Median Kingdom, which is Northern Iran area. And then there’s the Kingdom of Lydia, which is in Western Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. And this is the age of those four kingdoms.

Assyria, that kingdom had just collapsed. The king of Babylon and the king of Media had joined an alliance. That alliance had been cemented by a marriage of the son of the king of Babylon. His son Nebuchadnezzar married the daughter of the king of the Medes. And we have an alliance now. And so this alliance now went back against the Assyrian king and sacked them at Nineveh. And that was the end of the Assyrian Empire.

Egypt then, the big dynasty in Egypt, was the first to make a move in the area of Israel and it came up and extended its kingdom as far as Syria. That didn’t sit too well for the king of Babylon as you can imagine. Pharaoh Necho has made his way up to Syria and now then Babylon. Nabopolassar was the king. He’s too old to come down, so he sends his son, the young crown prince Nebuchadnezzar, to come down and defeat this king of Egypt. And so we have in 605 BC this famous battle, the Battle of Carchemish. This is in northern Syria, southern Turkey area there, and the Babylonian armies not only defeated Egypt, but they defeated them so well that the Egyptians didn’t quit running until they got back home to Egypt. It was an amazing defeat at the Battle of Carchemish. In 600 BC, Nebuchadnezzar sends his armies again down to Egypt this time and defeats them further down into their own territory. And this we read of in Isaiah chapter 19, this is a prophecy: “I will give Egyptians into the hands of a hard master and a fierce king will rule over them.” You can also read of it in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah as well.

So now we have this time of the great Babylonian Empire, and it’s now the most prominent of the empires of that area. I mentioned Nabopolassar. He dies in 605 BC, leaves his son Nebuchadnezzar now in charge. He’s the king when Daniel arrives in Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar was a very talented and very able king. He’s noted as that in historical sources as well. He built a system of dikes and canals and an irrigation system that was second to none in the ancient world. He fortified the city of Babylon with these huge walls that were so thick that several chariots could ride abreast on the tops of the walls. It was an impregnable city in that day. He also built the ancient ziggurat. Do you remember hearing that word? That stepped tower that is so big? One of the wonders of the ancient world. It was Nebuchadnezzar who built that. And Daniel was there, no doubt, witnessing both the construction and the completion of that. So Daniel is in Babylon at the height of its power.

There were several successors to Nebuchadnezzar at this time. Nabonidus was one of the successors. We know of him in historical sources as well. In 1880, archaeologists uncovered the famous Nabonidus Chronicle, and we learn about him. Up until then, critics had mocked the Book of Daniel for this mention in chapter 5 of Belshazzar. Who is this Belshazzar? We don’t know him. He’s not mentioned anywhere in the sources. And so Daniel obviously has it wrong. You don’t believe the Bible unless you just have to. And Daniel obviously has this Belshazzar—Nabonidus is the one in charge. Well, they’ve discovered this Nabonidus chronicle, and we found out that Nabonidus was actually off in Syria, or in Arabia, establishing some trade relations, and left his son Belshazzar in charge. And after all, Daniel got it right.

We have at this time also the kingdom of the Medes, the Median kingdom. It’s northwestern Iran. In previous centuries, that had been a bunch of disparate tribes, but they had been organized around 600 BC to become the great Median kingdom. And around 550 BC, the Median kingdom fell to the Persians. It became the great and the amazingly powerful Medo-Persian kingdom. And we’ll hear about that later in the book of Daniel as well. They defeated the Lydian kingdom. Their next goal of the Medo-Persian empire then, the next goal after defeating Media and becoming Medo-Persia, their goal was Babylon to the south. Babylon is becoming nervous at that time. That is probably why Nabonidus decides this is the time to go to Arabia to establish these trade relations and leave his son in charge.

And we get to chapter 5 of Daniel, and you’ll remember reading of that on Belshazzar’s feast and Daniel’s prophecy of what will come after the handwriting on the wall there. That night, after that feast, Medo-Persia sacked Babylon. They had impregnable walls, but there were traitors on the inside that let them in through a hidden gate. And the king of the Medo-Persians, Cyrus, comes in and he kills Belshazzar. He seems not to have molested the people of the city, but he is now in charge. Later on, a man by the name of Darius the Mede is in charge in Jerusalem. We don’t know his exact identity, but his name is Darius.

And then the next kingdom that we’ll find out is the kingdom of Greece. And that, of course, is the kingdom of Alexander the Great, the greatest of the Greek kings. He’s referred to in Daniel’s prophecy as well. He’s in chapter 2 in that great image, the bronze part of that metallic image. We also find him as one of the beasts in chapter 7. He’s also one of the horns on the ram in chapter 8, and so on, and we’ll be hearing about Greece. And this succession of kingdoms then is important to know about because it becomes prominent in Daniel’s prophecies. There’s Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and then we’ll find out Rome as well, which takes us not only to the Roman Empire back at the time of our Lord and the apostles, but also it extends in prophetic visions to the end of time as well.

The last date that is given to us in the book of Daniel is in Daniel chapter 10 and verse 1, and there Daniel writes of the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia. That would be 537 BC. So if you do the math, you have the first sack of Jerusalem when Daniel was taken in 606, 605 BC. Daniel would have been one of these young men that were taken, what, 17 years old, 20, something like that, 20 years of age. Now it’s nearly about 70 years later. And so Daniel was now at the end of the book, a very old man, and probably into his 90s.

Overview Of The Book

Well, so much then for the political background of the book. In a broad overview of the book, in chapters 1 to 6, we have this historical narrative that’s generally in chronological order. In chapters 7 through 12, we don’t have it in chronological order, but we do have a succession of prophecies and visions that are given. These detail for us much of history which has now been fulfilled and which is yet to be fulfilled at the end of time.

Also, it’s interesting here, I mentioned that part of the book is written in Aramaic. That is chapters 2 through 7. I think the significance of that is that this was—Aramaic was the language of the—it was the lingua franca, the international language of the day. From Babylon, it had been for a century or two now at this time. And the prophecies of chapters 2 through 7 have to do largely with the Gentile world, with Gentile nations. And so it’s written in Aramaic. Chapters 8 through 12, again, pick it up in Hebrew, and there the focus is on the history of the Jewish people, the history of Israel. I think that’s the significance of the change in language. Israel now is in Babylon. They have learned to speak Aramaic. By the way, when we come to the time of Jesus in the New Testament, this is still the language of the Jews. It is Aramaic. They would have learned Hebrew in their schools as well to be able to read the scriptures of course, but the language that was spoken in the day of Jesus was Aramaic. So he would have spoken Aramaic, Hebrew, no doubt Greek as well, perhaps even some Latin because that was the official language of the Roman Empire at the time.

Looking ahead then at the book, there’s a certain amount of repetition throughout the book, and we’re going to see this as we work our way through. There’s the succession of kingdoms. There’s Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. We’re going to see that over and again, and that certain repetition of that coming through the prophecies of Daniel. There’s a specific focus at times on that third kingdom, the kingdom of Greece. We’ll find that particularly in chapter 7 and chapters 8 and following. Not only the kingdom of Greece, but its aftermath as the kingdom of Alexander the Great is split up into its primary factions in its aftermath then and how that affects Israel in those days.

Also, we find repetition through the book of a focus on the coming persecution of the people of Israel, which is a fascinating thing because here it’s set in the context of persecution. They’re in exile. They are suffering. And yet there’s this prophecy of a coming opponent who will come. He’s spoken of as a beast. He’s spoken of as a big horn and things like that. But this awful persecutor who will come against the people of God—turns out it will be Antiochus. And then it turns out later, after Jesus picks it up, it’s going to be Titus and the Roman armies and the sack of Jerusalem in AD 70. And then as they pick it up—Jesus and the rest of the biblical writers as well—it becomes Antichrist himself at the end of the age. And all of these things reoccur through the book of Daniel. The succession of kingdoms—Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome—this focus on the Third Empire, Greece, and its aftermath, and as it splits up, this great opponent against the people of God, the persecution that’s coming. These are themes that we’ll see throughout the Book of Daniel.

Various Perspectives In The Book

And then what’s interesting, I think, is that we are led to see all of this from various perspectives in the Book of Daniel.

The first perspective, of course, is the experience of Israel herself. In verse 1: “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.” And you can only imagine the experience of that. This pagan king coming in, not only destroying the city, taking the king captive, destroying much of the nobility, eventually killing the king, putting in another puppet king, taking everything of value, destroying houses, and then eventually carrying the people themselves off into exile in a foreign land. It’s scarcely imagined from the perspective of Israel what the experience must have been like. It’s glossed over in historical terms in the scriptures given to us in a very cursory kind of fashion. But if you can just imagine between the lines what an awful time of suffering it was for the people themselves.

So we’re given here various perspectives. One is the people of Israel. Another perspective here is the perspective of the pagan kings themselves, a succession of kings that is going to be listed in these prophecies. We have Babylon, we have Cyrus, we have Darius. Eventually they talk about Alexander and others who will come. The succession of these pagan kings that come. They’re violent, they’re ravenous, they’re power-hungry tyrants. They have no regard for decency. They have no regard for human life. They take what they want to take. They kill anyone they feel like killing. There is no one to answer to. Just tyrants, no regard for any kind of law above themselves, whatever.

There’s that perspective: the perspective of Israel, the perspective of the pagan kings. There’s also then the perspective—and I’m not sure how to say this, but best—the perspective of faith. Or if you like better, the perspective of heaven. What I mean by that is that we’re led, especially in the book of Daniel, to see all of these events from the perspective of heaven, or to make it from our standpoint, from the perspective of one who knows God and one who knows who God is. And we’re led to see all of these amazing events from that heavenly kind of perspective by faith.

So for example, look at verses one and two again: “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God.” And there’s always that perspective that this is God’s doing. We find the same thing, if you’d like, to turn back to 2 Kings. We won’t take time now, but if you’d like to look back there on your own, 2 Kings chapter 24, verses 1 to 4, stress this very truth, that God has done this. And in fact, in verse 4 of 2 Kings 24, it caps it off with this statement: “Surely this came at the command of the Lord.”

And we’re led to see that in the book of Daniel already here in verse 2. We’ll see it through the prophecies as well. That this Nebuchadnezzar coming down on Jerusalem and seizing it and carrying away captives and wreaking havoc—this is all the outworking of God’s own purpose for Israel. He has come; God has worked out his own plan of punishment against his disobedient people. Now we have running through this as well, this theme of the spiritual conflict that begins back in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15—Satan against the woman, Satan’s followers against the seed of the woman. We see that conflict theme running all through the Bible. But above it all—and that’s here too—but above it all, what we see is that God still rules. It is his purpose being worked out in all of these even awful events. It is God giving the hand, or giving Jehoiakim into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. That’s a fascinating thing to say.

We’ll see it in chapter one here already, in verses eight and following, we have the—on an individual level—God in control, working out his purpose. This test that Daniel takes, “I won’t eat the king’s food.” Remarkable dedication on the part of Daniel; it seems to me that he’s just going to eat vegetables. He must have had a metabolism like mine because he’s still got fat on just that. But here we have Daniel and the three other friends eating this diet of just vegetables and still becoming more plump than the others. God at work.

We find it in a more spectacular way in chapter 3: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They won’t bow before that image. “You can throw us in the fire if you like, but we’re not going to bow.” So you throw them in. And God is working in that as well. We find it again in chapter 6 on an individual level. You put pressure on Daniel, he’s still going to pray. He’s still going to pray to his God. You can throw him to the lions if you like, but he’s going to pray. And guess what? The lions are no threat to God either.

We see this picture of God as sovereign over all. We see it in chapter one, chapter three, chapter six, but we see it in all the prophecies as well, in this just giving of the hand of, giving Jerusalem into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. This is God’s doing. We’ll find it in Chapter 2 in the vision of this great image. We find it emphasized in Chapter 4 when Nebuchadnezzar will make the same confession himself. We’ll find it in Chapter 3 in the prophecies of the successive kingdoms. This is God working out his will, and we’ll see that at length. And that, I’m convinced, is the overall theme of the book of Daniel: of God’s sovereign rule over all the nations. But here we have it—God ruling over all of the nations, and God ruling in all of the affairs of individuals as well.

So we have the perspective of Israel. We’re given the perspective of the successive pagan kings, and we’re also given the perspective of faith. And then last here to chapter one, we are allowed to see all of this from the perspective of Daniel and his three friends.

Faithful Daniel

I suppose the theme of chapter one is simply, beyond its historical setting that it gives beginning in verse eight, the theme is simply “Faithful Daniel.” Faithful Daniel.

Nebuchadnezzar had a well-formulated plan to bring his captive peoples into subjection to him. We’ve already seen that he uproots them and takes them away in mass. But also he takes the nobility and the best of the young people and begins to train them for life and service in Babylon. He relocates them. They’re no longer tempted to fight for their own land because they’re not there. They’re, of course, made to bow before the new king and show subjection to him. They take the best and the brightest of Israel’s young nobility, and they groom them for service in Babylon. Think here something of the wicked infiltrating the universities. Well, here it’s just, “Let’s take them to our wicked universities” is the idea. Isolate them from their influences of their own heritage. Isolate them from the influence of their religion. Train them in the ways of Babylon. Spoil them along the way so that they’ll be willing to compromise. That’s verse 5, giving them the king’s food. Rename them, verse 7. Give them different names that don’t sound so Jewish. And so we have them now trained in the language, the literature, the culture, the society, the food of Babylon, and even given them Babylonian names. That is to say, we will make them Babylonians.

It’s really a shrewd program that Nebuchadnezzar has put in effect. Immerse them in this new culture so they begin to feel part of it. Forget Israel. Forget the temple, forget your old religion and your old God, and become Babylonians. And then we read that Daniel and his friends had their limits. They’re willing to learn, and they’re willing to serve the king as faithful subjects. But they’re not willing to go all the way and make themselves feel at home in this pagan environment. And so they refuse to take the king’s food. Now it might be that the king’s food here involved non-kosher food. I suspect that’s part of it. But it seems to me to go further because they won’t even drink the king’s wine. And it seems to me that there’s more than just rejecting non-kosher food. It seems that what Daniel is thinking is that, “I won’t allow myself to become too comfortable, make myself feel too at home in this environment. If I become too much like the king, I’ll be so sucked into this new culture that I’ll become part of it and forget everything about what Jews really are.”

And so he purposed in his heart. And verse eight tells us his thinking: “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or with the wine that he drank.” And this was evidently from the beginning. He didn’t wait and try it for a while. “Let’s see how it goes.” He didn’t want to risk the seductive influence of it. He drew his line here and decided in his heart that he would be faithful. And this is a boundary that he had set up in order to remain faithful. And it says in verse eight that he was resolved, decided, determined to be faithful. He will not compromise. He won’t participate in that which could endanger his faithfulness to God. Faithful Daniel.

That same note of faithfulness is seen throughout the book. I’ve already mentioned it in passing in chapter 3. We have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to bow and going to the fiery furnace. The same faithful resolve there: “You can throw us in the fire if you want. God’s able to deliver. He might not. But in either case, we are not going to bow.” The same faithfulness. We see it in another dimension with Daniel in chapter 2. In chapter four, imagine going to this great, powerful king who holds your life in his hands and telling him humbly and with poise, but boldly, “You’re too proud. You need to humble yourself before the Lord God of heaven.” We find it in chapter six, same kind of faithfulness. Daniel praying even under the threat of the lions. These are just individual samples, I think, of this perspective of faith that I mentioned earlier. This is what the faithful do when they’re in this strange land.

Psalm 137, verses 1 to 4, I think gives us a memorable glimpse of the people of Israel and Babylon. As soon as I read the words, those of you who are old enough to remember the rock group in the late 70s, “By the rivers of Babylon where we sat down,” you remember that? You’ve heard it. Hey, hey, we wailed when we remembered Zion. That’s taken out of Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

And then they thought to themselves, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Here they want us to be happy and dance and sing our fun songs from Zion, the songs of our own land, the songs of our own heritage—how can we do that here in Babylon? And we’ve hung up our harps on the willows. Those days are over.

And of course, the answer that Daniel gives to that dilemma—how do you sing the Lord’s song in the foreign land?—the answer is the perspective of faith. Not a blind faith, but a faith that’s grounded on God’s word and God’s promises. And the great message of Daniel is that God is not some local deity that was left back in Jerusalem. Israel is not in Babylon because God was defeated. Israel is in Babylon because God gave Jehoiakim into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. And Israel is in Babylon because of God’s purpose. And Nebuchadnezzar has succeeded in all of this because of God’s pleasure. And all of that, though, in no way nullifies God’s promise that he’ll bring you back. In chapter 9 we’ll find Daniel reading Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years of captivity. He starts to do the math and he says, “This time should be about up and our people are going to go back.” God is God over the nations. He’s not some isolated deity back in Jerusalem.

And this God who can tell about the succession of kingdoms—he can tell of it because he’s the God who reigns over all of it. He’s the maker of history. And if he said he’s going to bring his people back, he’ll bring them back. And so this God deserves—we owe it to him to be faithful. Or in the words of chapter two, there is a God in heaven whose will and his purpose will never be frustrated. He’s God over the nations, and we owe him our allegiance. And he’s shown us what faithfulness requires: that we won’t compromise. We won’t bow to the pressures. We will still be faithful.

And we just can’t miss this here in Daniel chapter 1. In the coming weeks, we’ll emphasize Daniel’s prophecy and the succession of history and all of that, the culmination of history in the kingdom of God. We’ll see all of that. But in Daniel chapter 1, we can’t help but see that Daniel is held up here as a model of faithfulness. And that, I think, is the theme of chapter 1: “Faithful Daniel.” You might remember he’s given honorable mention in the Hall of Faith fame in Hebrews chapter 11. He’s not mentioned by name, but he’s mentioned: “Who through faith subdued kingdoms and stopped the mouths of lions.” There he is in Hebrews 11. A model of faithfulness. And he’s presented here as one whose faith is to be emulated.

We’re not captives in a foreign land, but I think—and I don’t think it’s over-reading the text at all—I think we are intended to look at this and see that our situation is not altogether different. We’re not captives in a foreign land, but we are citizens of heaven in exile in a foreign land. We are a very distinct minority. In this foreign land, the wicked control all of the centers of our society: public education, entertainment, media, the news outlets, the arts—all of the cultural centers in the hands of unbelievers. And we are in a very relatively small minority and often we’re made to feel it. And one reason the book of Daniel is given to us, particularly here in chapter one, is to provide this model of faithfulness in a strange land, right up front in the first chapter. Here’s a man who is faithful to God. Israel’s in a strange land under a chastening hand of God. What are we to do? Here’s what you do: you remain faithful. You remain faithful. And you don’t let a society around you determine what your standards are. God draws those lines, and you stay there.

We want to hear Daniel’s prophecies, we want to hear about these visions, and we want to learn from them of the greatness of God and His control over the nations and His rule, directing them all to His own purpose, and we’ll see that. But we also want to know how to honor this God with our lives, and that’s what Daniel 1 is given to us for. I don’t know of many songs taken from the book of Daniel. Certainly many songs draw from the ideas in Daniel. I don’t know if there are any songs—I was talking with Kim on the way here to church this morning. I do know of one. Sang it when I was a kid in Sunday school. “Dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose firm. Dare to make it known.” In a way that captures very well, although the rest of the song fleshes it out in other ways, it captures well the theme of chapter one.

You’ll think I am an Arminian when I say this, but one song that captures this very well—when I learned it, I was a teenager, and I remember when I learned it, I thought in terms of Daniel chapter 1 and verse 8. “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food.” That’s the chorus: “I’ve decided to follow Jesus.” I know that’s been criticized because of its supposed decisionalism. We don’t decide for God as much as he opens our eyes to see him and gives us faith and all of that. That’s not how I understood the song. I’m not sure that’s how we should understand the song. As a teenager when I learned it, I was at that early age looking at life from that early side, you know, and I found it very encouraging and strengthening my resolve. I thought of it in terms of verse eight. “I’ve decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. Though none go with me, still I’ll follow, no turning back.” That’s what I want with my life. And that’s what Daniel 1:8 is about. I think that’s what Daniel chapter 1 is given to us for, to tell us of a faithful Daniel. And that’s the message of his life.

Faithful, he’s resolved, he’s determined, he’s decided. He won’t adjust his thinking to the society around him. He’s going to set his standards and his priorities according to what God wants, and he’ll be faithful. We can’t help but see Daniel in chapter one and in other places as well throughout the book of Daniel simply saying, “God deserves my loyalty. I’ll be loyal to my king and I’ll be obedient and I’ll serve him the best that I can, but above all else, I’m gonna serve the Lord God.” And when the king requires something different, he can throw me into the lion’s den and he can do anything else. I’m going to follow God and I’m going to be faithful.

And at the end of the book, chapter 12, Daniel points out that there are consequences to be given as a result of it all. Many of those who are in the dust of the earth will be raised: these to eternal life, these to eternal condemnation. And those that are righteous will shine as the stars forever and forever. Well, that’s the man whose prophecies that we will examine in the coming weeks. He’ll show us the flow of world history all the way to the climax, the culmination of the kingdom of God. But this is what we learned from him, I think in chapter one: faithful Daniel serve God; he deserves our loyalty. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, we are grateful for this wonderful example of faithfulness. We’re challenged by it. Can only imagine the pressures that he had in that situation. Ours, by contrast, seems so little. Help us to learn to be faithful. Lord, we belong to you. You’ve bought us by the blood of your Son. We are yours. We willingly give ourselves to you and to the service of Christ. Keep us faithful. Help us then also to learn from this book of your great purpose in history so that we can see all the better that you deserve our loyalty, that you are a God who is to be served, and you are a God whose purpose will prevail in all of history. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.